SOME of Britain’s most prominent business families have led a £57m fundraising to set up Europe’s largest venture-capital fund dedicated to clean technology and renewable energy.

Lord (Jacob) Rothschild of the banking dynasty, Sir Anthony Bamford and family, of the JCB empire, the Goldsmiths, and Simon Robertson, Rolls-Royce chairman and former head of Goldman Sachs Europe, have all ploughed money into the new fund from WHEB Ventures.

The firm, set up in 2002 by Ben Goldsmith, Kim Heyworth and Rob Wylie, hopes to raise a total of £150m for the new fund within the next year.

Having attracted the corner-stone money from family offices, it is now in talks with pension funds, sovereign wealth funds and other institutions to make up the difference. Several of the families invested in the first fund....MORE